tdAcademy is a knowledge and exchange platform on transdisciplinary research. The tdAcademy pursues three objectives. First, developing and consolidating state of the art insights within the transdisciplinary research community (“Research”). Second, providing high quality capacity building opportunities for transdisciplinary researchers (“Enable”). Third, supporting and further developing the transdisciplinary research community by providing a space for exchange, reflection, collaboration, and new ideas (“Connect”). The international community is actively involved in the project through a group of supporting partner institutions as well as a guest and fellow program.
The founding partners of tdAcademy are four institutions with a proven track record in transdisciplinary research: The Frankfurt ISOE – Institute for Social-Ecological Research, the Leuphana University Lüneburg, the Center for Technology and Society (ZTG) at Technische Universität Berlin and the Oeko-Institut in Freiburg. The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the funding scheme Social-Ecological Research. The guest and fellowship program is funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung.
tdAcademy lives through exchange within the community. Therefore, the group of supporting partners will closely involve other academic institutions within the German-speaking and international community to jointly conduct, promote, and shape transdisciplinary research. The group of supporting partners will be extended continuously. Two representatives from the group of supporting partners will become members of the steering group of the platform tdAcademy.
tdAcademy strengthens the knowledge base, further development and networking in transdisciplinary research via a working mode that closely interlinks the modules "Research", "Enable" and "Connect" with their various activities.
The project focuses on four topic lines that investigate core questions of transdisciplinary research:
The Guest and Fellowship Pogramme funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung enables an active involvement of relevant actors of transdisciplinary research in the tdAcademy. Researchers, also targeting specifically Early Career Researchers from the global south and global north, have the opportunity to widen their network, exchange their research experiences, discuss the latest developments of transdisciplinary research, and present their own research to the global community. Guests and fellows can work individually or collaboratively on specific topics, write publications or position papers and develop innovative approaches and ideas. The first research stays are planned for early 2021.
tdAcademy succeeds TransImpact. The results from the completed research project TransImpact will be available in English soon. For each of the central topics – i.e. problem definition, participation of societal actors, knowledge integration and transferability of results – recommendations and methods for an adaptive shaping of transdisciplinary research processes to foster societal effects will be provided. TransImpact was carried out by ISOE – Institute for Social-Ecological Research and the Center for Technology and Society (ZTG) at Technische Universität Berlin between 2015 and 2019 (funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research).
